The Universe

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Studying the cosmos could end it if quantum theories are correct. This is based on strange way quantum states are affected when observedIn Schrödinger's cat experiment, a cat in a box, whose fate is decided by subatomic particles, is both alive and dead until someone looks at itAccording to two U.S. scientists, the same thing could happen to the universe, causing an irreversible shift in the universe's energySome scientists think universe is overdue for a quantum energy changeIf shift occurs, it won't exceed the speed of light, so we’ll see it coming By Ellie Zolfagharifard Published: 12:33 GMT, 5 February 2014 | Updated: 09:58 GMT, 6 February 2014 Knowledge is power - or at least that’s what we’ve been led to believe.

But knowing too much could accidentally trigger a countdown to Armageddon, according to two U.S. physicists.
Building the Universe Inside a Supercomputer. As my grandfather once told me, to truly understand how something works, “you need to build it yourself.”

And he knew what he was talking about. As a skilled toolmaker for all his working life he actually built the tools used to build things like jet engines to automated factory machinery. So, as I read Monday’s article about South Korean physicists building a program on one of the world’s most powerful computers to simulate the evolution of our Universe, although he wasn’t an astrophysicist himself, I knew my grandfather would instantly understand what they were hoping to achieve. SCIENCE CHANNEL VIDEO: Through the Wormhole: Dark Matter In an arXiv preprint publication submitted on Dec. 8, Juhan Kim and colleagues from the Korea Institute for Advanced Study in Seoul have completed the largest simulation of the universe ever attempted.

These are staggering numbers and the calculations required a stupidly fast supercomputer — called Tachyon II — to process them.
Brian Greene: The Search For Hidden Dimensions. Nature's laws may vary across the Universe. (PhysOrg.com) -- One of the laws of nature may vary across the Universe, according to a study published today in the journal Physical Review Letters.

One of the most cherished principles in science - the constancy of physics - may not be true, according to research carried out at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Swinburne University of Technology and the University of Cambridge. The study found that one of the four known fundamental forces, electromagnetism - measured by the so-called fine-structure constant and denoted by the symbol ‘alpha' - seems to vary across the Universe. The first hints that alpha might not be constant came a decade ago when Professor John Webb, Professor Victor Flambaum, and other colleagues at UNSW and elsewhere, analysed observations from the Keck Observatory, in Hawaii. Those observations were restricted to one broad area in the sky.
World's most powerful laser to tear apart the vacuum of space.

Astronomers discover complex organic matter in the universe. A spectrum of complex organics from the European Space Agency's Infrared Space Observatory superimposed on an image of the Orion nebula, where these compounds are found (credit: NASA, C.R.

O'Dell, S.K. Wong/Rice University) Organic compounds of unexpected complexity exist throughout the universe, Prof. Sun Kwok and Dr. Yong Zhang of the University of Hong Kong have discovered, suggesting that complex organic compounds can be synthesized in space even when no life forms are present. The organic substance they found contains a mixture of aromatic (ring-like) and aliphatic (chain-like) components that are so complex, their chemical structures resemble those of coal and petroleum.

8 Shocking Things We Learned From Stephen Hawking's Book. From the idea that our universe is one among many, to the revelation that mathematician Pythagoras didn't actually invent the Pythagorean theorem, here are eight shocking things we learned from reading physicist Stephen Hawking's new book, "The Grand Design," written with fellow physicist Leonard Mlodinow of Caltech.

The book, covering major questions about the nature and origin of the universe, was released Sept. 7 by its publisher, Bantam. 1. The past is possibility According to Hawking and Mlodinow, one consequence of the theory of quantum mechanics is that events in the past that were not directly observed did not happen in a definite way. Instead they happened in all possible ways. For example, if all we know is that a particle traveled from point A to point B, then it is not true that the particle took a definite path and we just don't know what it is. Yeah, we're still trying to wrap our brains around this. 2.
The Big Bang: What Really Happened at Our Universe's Birth?
It took quite a bit more than seven days to create the universe as we know it today.

SPACE.com looks at the mysteries of the heavens in our eight-part series: The History & Future of the Cosmos. This is Part 5 in that series. Our universe was born about 13.7 billion years ago in a massive expansion that blew space up like a gigantic balloon. That, in a nutshell, is the Big Bang theory, which virtually all cosmologists and theoretical physicists endorse.